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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another winner from the 87th Precinct, January 12, 2003
Ed McBain likes the titles of his 87th Precinct series to bear more than one meaning, and "Fat Ollie's Book" is no exception. Fat Ollie Weeks, detective of the neighboring 88th Precinct, stands at the center of this novel, having caught the call on the murder of an aspiring politician. Fat Ollie, not an incompetent detective but quite willing to let others carry the load if circumstances warrant, shifts the burden of the investigation to Steve Carella and Bert Kling while he pursues a case far more important to himself - the theft of the sole existing copy of the manuscript of, well, Fat Ollie's book, a detective thriller written by him to cash in on the lucrative fiction market dominated by a bunch of women amateurs who wholly lack his real world expertise and insights. The book took him months to write, too, at least three or four months, all thirty-six pages of it, and he wants it back, no matter the effort required or whose toes must be stomped on. Fat Ollie, it should be said, is a racist, but that is an inadequate description. He is also an ethnic, religious, and sexist bigot. He despises, in short, everyone not exactly like himself. Come to think of it, he also despises anybody who IS like himself. Oblivious to the insults he showers upon others and sensitive to slights from others, he nonetheless is not absolutely without a touch of oafish charm, just enough to intrigue a Puerto Rican uniformed female cop caught up in the murder case and just enough to keep the reader interested in such an otherwise unsympathetic protagonist. As usual in the 87th Precinct novels, the plot twists around itself, sweeping up a collection of odd characters marching unknowingly to inevitable interaction and intermeshed fates. Along the way, we get to read - in short doses - Ollie's truly dreadful attempt at literary creation, so bad as to become bizarre fun. And we follow the developing stories of McBain's familiar stable of detectives from the more than fifty novels that have preceded this one. No 87th Precinct fan should miss this one, another top-notch entry in this series filled with dark humor.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fat Ollie and friends in the big bad city., March 8, 2003
In his fifty-second 87th Precinct novel, Ed McBain features the loathsome and obese sexist bigot, Fat Ollie, who has finally finished his own police procedural, "Report to the Commissioner." Oliver Weeks sees himself as a literary lion in the making. The protagonist of his rather brief novel is Ollie's female and slim alter ego, whom he names Olivia Wesley Watts. Unfortunately, Fat Ollie never got around to making a copy of his manuscript, which he composed on an old fashioned typewriter. When Ollie leaves the novel in a dispatch case in his car, a junkie steals the case and its precious contents. "Fat Ollie's Book" has many of McBain's trademark touches. It is politically incorrect and filled with flippant dialogue. The author seamlessly threads three main plot lines throughout the book and they cleverly overlap at times. A prominent councilman who may be planning to run for mayor is shot while preparing for a rally. A pair of cops is hoping to interrupt a big drug sale. And, of course, Ollie is determined to find the perp who ripped off his precious book. McBain's 87th precinct novels are always entertaining, and "Fat Ollie's Book" gets high marks for its large and colorful cast of characters, its fast moving story and its self-mockery. McBain quotes large sections of Ollie's book, and through Ollie, McBain makes fun of the conventions of the police procedural. McBain's fictional city of Isola is a homage to New York City, with its high-octane excitement, its political pressure and the desperation and chutzpah of its criminal element. Ed McBain has won every award that is available to a mystery writer. "Fat Ollie's Book" makes it clear why McBain has remained successful for so many years, while lesser talents have fallen by the wayside. This novel, like so many others in this series, is witty, smart and irreverent, and I recommend it.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another winner from the grand master of mystery writers, January 8, 2003
Every time I read an Ed McBain novel (and I've probably read half of the more than 50 he's written, each a gem), I wonder why it's not sitting atop a best-seller list (arbitrary as those lists may be). Mystery-lovers of the world, take notice! McBain (aka Evan Hunter) is a brilliant writer, the kind who dreams up ingenious plots and then populates them with an array of diverse characters, filled with spunk and armed with witty banter, who will make you laugh out loud and might - just might - even cause you to shed a tear or two. In this latest winner, Detective Oliver Wendell "Fat Ollie" Weeks of the 88th Precinct has written his first novel - a police procedural. Unfortunately, just as he's taking his precious tome (all 36 - yes, 36 - pages of it) to be photocopied (somehow Fat Ollie hasn't seen fit to purchase a computer), he gets called to a murder investigation, and wouldn't you know it, someone filches the sure-to-be-a-best-seller (!) from the back of his squad car while he's off fighting crime. Can Fat Ollie find time to recover the manuscript while solving the murder of a political up-and-comer? Heck, should he even be concentrating on the murder when the fruit of his labor has disappeared? Truth and fiction are tightly intertwined as Fat Ollie teams up with the boys from the nearby 87th Precinct (familiar to and well-loved by McBain fans everywhere) to figure it all out. McBain's sense of humor is beyond priceless, if that's possible, and this story is a grand piece of entertainment. I enjoyed every page. Don't miss it.
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